[Air-L] CFP: Special Issue of Technical Communication on "Globalizing User Experience"

[Huatong Sun]

(Apologies for cross-posting)


Questions on the special issue? Please contact us at
tc.special.issue at gmail.com.


Thanks,


Huatong


-------------------


*Globalizing User Experience: Strategies, Practices, and Techniques for
Culturally Sensitive Design*



*Technical Communication*, the journal of the Society for Technical
Communication (STC), is soliciting article proposals for an upcoming
special issue that will examine how technical communicators can design for
new kinds of user experiences in international, cross-cultural, and
multicultural contexts. This special issue will be published in February of
2017, and the guest editors are Guiseppe Getto and Huatong Sun.



*SPECIAL ISSUE DESCRIPTION*

Cultural diversity has been embraced as a core value by many companies in
today’s increasingly globalized and multicultural workplace. Meanwhile, the
design, implementation, evaluation, distribution, and consumption of
information products now happen more often on a global level. While a
majority of companies are not designing global-ready products from the
beginning, the most successful products usually traverse the local in favor
of a global user base. Thus, global UX design is a common part of the work
lives of many technical communicators (Quesenbery & Szuc, 2012; Schumacher,
2010; Sun, 2012).



At a time when the roles of technical communicator and user experience
designer have begun to blur in productive ways (Redish, 2010; Redish &
Barnum, 2011), technical communicators have been making valuable
contributions to the development of the UX field by bringing theory,
research, and design techniques. At the same time, UX is becoming an
essential skill set for technical communicators in a variety of industries.




Indeed, today’s technical communicators are designers who employ
information and communication technologies (ICTs) to transform our
workplaces, our communities, and our society. As technology design moves
towards more socially- and ethically-oriented approaches, technical
communicators are playing an important role in cultivating cultural
humility (Tervalon & Murray-Garcia, 1998). This includes accounting
for cultural
differences and building a more inclusive and diverse workplace in an
increasingly global society with our rhetorical expertise and empathy
toward users.



The trends described above are increasingly affecting the work we do as
industry practitioners, academic researchers, university and college
educators, and independent entrepreneurs in technical communication. It is
time for us to reflect on our endeavors so far, to examine our surrounding
cultures and structures at a new stage of globalization, and to develop
better strategies, practices, and techniques to design more culturally
appropriate information products in order to empower our users globally and
locally.



*POSSIBLE TOPICS FOR THIS SPECIAL ISSUE*

The guest editors invite proposals for papers on applied research or
theory, case histories/studies, tutorials, and/or annotated bibliographies
that address issues such as the following:

   - How should technical communicators attend to issues related to user
   experience within the organizations they work in, and around the products
   they help deploy, in terms of collaboration, communication, complexity, and
   change (Redish, 2010)?
   - What can technical communicators teach their UX colleagues about
   cross-cultural and international communication and product deployment?
   - How should technical communicators work as user advocates to develop
   more culturally sensitive design and research methods to address the
   digital divide between the global north and south?
   - What expertise do technical communicators bring to informing
   innovative practices of work and design to develop a more diverse workplace
   and a more heterogeneous society?
   - How do political, legal, economic, and/or technological issues affect
   the ways that information products are deployed within local cultures?
   - How do cultural differences relating to intellectual property and
   copyright affect technical communication practices – particularly practices
   involving globally distributed teams?

*SUBMISSION GUIDELINES*

Proposals should be no more than 400 words in length. All proposals should
include submitter name, affiliation, and email address as well as a working
title for the proposed article.



*PRODUCTION SCHEDULE*

The schedule for the special issue is as follows:

   - April 15, 2016 – 400-word proposals due
   - May 15, 2016 – Guest editors return proposal decisions to submitters
   - August 15, 2016 – Draft manuscripts of accepted proposals due
   - November 15, 2016 – Final manuscripts due
   - February 1, 2017 – Publication date of special issue

*CONTACT INFORMATION*

Completed proposals or questions about either proposal topics or this
special issue should be sent to Guiseppe Getto and Huatong Sun at
tc.special.issue at gmail.com.



*References*

Quesenbery, W.  & Szuc, D. (2012) Global UX: Design & research in a
connected world. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

Redish, J. (2010). Technical communication & usability: Intertwined strands
and mutual influences. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication,
53(3), 191-201.

Redish, J.  & Barnum, C. (2011). Overlap, influence, intertwining: The
interplay of UX and technical communication. Journal of Usability Studies,
6(3), 90-101.

Schumacher, R. (ed). (2010). Handbook of global user research. Burlington,
MA: Morgan Kaufmann.

Sun, H. (2012). Cross-cultural technology design: Creating
culture-sensitive technology for local users. New York: Oxford University
Press.

Tervalon, M., & Murray-Garcia, J. (1998). Cultural humility versus cultural
competence: A critical distinction in defining physician training outcomes
in multicultural education. Journal of Health Care for the Poor and
Undeserved*, *9(2), 117-125.